New Year 2024 found me frustrated, restless, and burnt out. I processed through much of that by March of 2024 and was feeling more settled. Mere weeks later I would discover I was pregnant, then April came in swinging with tough stuff.
There was a time in April last year that the cheerful and beautiful birdsong felt revolting. This sentiment didn’t last long and I remember finding comfort in the reality that God continued in beautiful things though I could not feel them or enjoy them.
Over the years this reality that God makes beautiful and good things continuously through pain and grief has become a balm for my soul.
That reality used to feel like salt in my wounds. But it doesn’t anymore.
Before children, April 2018 was the climax of anger and pain during our infertility season. That climax was followed shortly by a turning point into healing and closeness with Christ, but not before I really broke.
After giving birth to my second child, April was the month I sank pretty low in postpartum fog and sadness. It didn’t last longer than a few weeks, but it went deep. The few months that followed still had me struggling until I was about 4 months postpartum and things started leveling out.
And last April? Things so far outside my control were at a tipping point. I wrote about some of that experience here. But it was last April I learned to love the birdsong, to find comfort in the beauty God continuously works.
And it is now in this spring that I have finally grasped the grace of God in all of these spring seasons behind & before me.
I can finally and truly see that even in great unknowns and deep despair the presence of God’s beauty and goodness persists and this is actually a most comforting truth.
Like so many Aprils before I was given hard news to swallow again, but instead of running away with eyes closed and hands jammed against my ears, I found myself embracing the comfort God offers through the beauty of spring, the beauty He makes continuously no matter my emotions or heartbreak.
Nowadays I am immersed in and thankful for such beauty though there are dark days ahead and unknown outcomes looming.
I am overwhelmed not by fear but by the joy & peace of such beauty.
MELODY
-S.V.F.
It was joy and sorrow
When springtime came
The flowers grew
Anyway.
Birdsong broke and my
Heart did
Too,
I was crushed
And blooming.
All these years later I have unearthed the kind reality at last…
To have so often received hard news when the outdoor world is lush and new, soft and full of light, I have discovered to be a gift from God.
All those springs come and gone, yet God’s goodness unfurls before me like a rainbow stretched over a stormy sky.
What used to be salt in my wounds has actually been the grace of God all along.
Nothing can hinder God from working beauty and life, fullness and light. So even when the chasm of heartache is wide, when the unknowns loom large, when the dreams haunt, when my own experiences in the spring hold their own ugly twists, there I am (and have always been) waist-deep in the beauty of God, anyway. And these days? I’m overwhelmed by the deep joy of that.
Grace, grace, grace.
All along, grace.
read more:
There Are Things I Wasn’t Prepared for When I Became a Mother
Gold Rush – a poem for mothers
Dandelions from a Mother’s Perspective – a poem of love & letting go
❤
Sierra V. Fedorko 
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